Dance till you drop or Acting Skills Competition at a glance

11.07.2018

Just recently, the NucKids 2018 Project held an internal casting, and members of the creative team gradually began to realize who of the participants can play this or that role. But here’s the question. What if at the internal selection the child did not reveal himself or did not reveal himself fully? To the rescue of nuclear kids and teachers comes the traditional Acting Skills Competition, so called ASC.

The NucKids Project has many events that are held regularly every year. One of them is the Acting Skills Competition. More than one generation of project participants is in love with this competition. The ASC is the best way to show yourself, if you suddenly embarrassed at the internal casting. And for the creative team it is another opportunity to look at the participants from an acting point of view.

After the internal casting it seemed that the difficulties were over, that we could take a breath and wait for the distribution of roles. But not so fast! Former participants of the project know that in the first days of NucKids a mandatory part of the program is an acting contest, where you can show your acting skills and prove to the teachers that you are worthy to be a part of a big musical.

So what is ASC? So what is this Acting Skills Competition? The ASC is a set of acting tasks where children can showcase their talent for transformation and improvisation. It sounds scary, but in fact it all looks like one big fun game, where there are no winners and losers, but only a load of positive emotions. To make it more interesting, the hosts added a competitive aspect – everyone can participate, but there is only one winner.

The ASC takes place in several rounds. All kids participate in the first round. They should move in a circle and depict animals. At first glance, it’s simple, but would you try to depict a centipede or a llama for example! Our acting teachers have a lot of creativity!

In the second round, the atomic actors had to personify various household items. The highlight of the program was when the youngest participants of the project were showing a car part.

In the third round, the lucky semi-finalists had to recite a poem about the famous Tanya and the ill-fated ball. But there were two conditions – at the same time the participant had to show the animal and profession. The combination of a hamster-surgeon and a monkey-colonel will remain in the hearts of the audience for a long time!

The last round of the competition was a dance improvisation, where ten finalists had to prove to the jury that they were worthy to be the winners. By the end of the event, the project teachers could not hold back their laughter, and the children in the hall were not lagging behind. The last contest, the last stage, was just in a burst! The hall was buzzing with enthusiasm, and it seemed that the quiet and peaceful Hungarian town felt our “atomic” energy!

“It was quite difficult to go through the competitions. It is difficult to predict how the judges will evaluate you, what they will write about you, who will be chosen. I found the first round the most difficult, when you had to show the animals. There were many of us – two teams – and I really wanted to be noticed. Some of the animals were very strange, I didn’t even know anything about them before. But still it was very, very cool!

Yelizaveta Balyura, 12 years old from Vyksa.

The ASC is also the first mass event of NucKids Project. It is at the ASC that newly arrived children begin to feel the atmosphere of the project, which we are so proud of and which we treat very reverently. The project participants could feel atmosphere of friendship, the feeling of unity and a strong emotional wave for the first time this evening.

The acting tasks themselves took a secondary place, when in between acting tours the guys rocked to the songs from musicals of the past years. All the friendly team sang the hits of NucKids, which we all know by heart, following the former participants of the project. This is the continuity of generations. It was especially surprising when foreign participants joined the party and together with everyone, trying to find words, sang along: “This is Nuckids – the best project in the world! And we love you!”

“The acting competition was really cool! I enjoyed everything about it! I wish there were more events like this. I cheered for every team, and even though I got knocked out of the competition in the halfway point, I still had lots and lots of fun! The Russian children are very talented, especially the little contestants. They just blew me away!”

Rajesh Vishwasudhan, 14 years old from India

But here, the acting contest came to an end. Naturally, after such an unreal show, the judges simply could not give the victory to only one participant. Therefore, 4 people became winners at once: Lisa Balyura (Vyksa), Oliver Mara (Moscow), Denis Ivakhnenko (Novovoronezh) and Dasha Maslova (Nizhny Novgorod). The ASC made the role distribution task much easier for the teachers. But more about that later!

Lev Suslov,

Specially for nuckids.ru